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Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Leaving of Liverpool

I loved this story!
Normally if I find a book very good I just can't put the book down.
But this book is the kind of good books you want to last forever.
You are eager to find out how it will end, but at the same time you don't want the story to end ;) So I have been reading a few pages now and then, letting the two different stories about Anne and Mollie soak in.

On a cold February night in 1925, Mollie and Annemarie Kenny escape from their home in a tiny Irish village. Their beloved mother has died and the girls have suffered shocking abuse at the hands of their doctor father. With sensitive, creative Annemarie so traumatized she can barely remember her name, Mollie decides they should make a new life for themselves, taking her younger sister to Liverpool to board a ship bound for New York and, she hopes, safety. But the smallest, cruelest twist of fate conspires to separate the girls just as the boat is about to sail, leaving Mollie stranded in Liverpool and Annemarie at the mercy of strangers in America. The subsequent paths of their lives could not be more different. Annemarie discovers her future, her fortune, and her raison d'etre on Broadway, while Mollie, devastated by guilt and grief at the loss of her sister, eventually carves out a life of family, hearth, and home in Liverpool, a city of warmth and humor that she grows to love. As the 1920s make way for the Depression and the edgy 1930s, the specter of another war looms. The Second World War will separate many more people from their loved ones, but, as Mollie sees in the cheerful, stoical camaraderie of blitzed Liverpool, it can also bring people together.

5 comments:

I love your book reviews! This one sounds so good. Is there any graphic detail of the abuse the little girl suffers at the hands of her father? If there is that would be the one thing that would keep me from reading it. I can't handle reading passages like that.